The President of the United States has affirmed a clear-cut, definitive position with reference to Soviet Russia, the first such action since a former president led us into diplomatic recognition of that nation 30 years ago. There have been previous efforts to “contain” Communism in many parts of the world. In Korea the United States engaged in a war against aggression by a puppet of Moscow. But now the Soviet government has been confronted for the first time by what amounts to an ultimatum. No one can predict the immediate outcome. But one thing is certain. Millions who cherish their remaining freedoms—not only Americans but peoples of other free nations—take heart that at long last America has firmly declared her determination to resist tyrannical aggressors, even if war should result.
We believe this is the only language Communism understands. It is also the language of righteousness and justice and hope. The President and those who share with him the staggering burdens of the future should have our earnest prayers for God’s wisdom, guidance, and help. If the subjective posture implied by this clearer understanding of the Soviet menace and by this new resolve to resist aggression is actually translated into history, it may well mark a first turn toward the reconstruction of liberty in large segments of the tyrannical Communist world.
Even as we write we can hear those voices which will equate American bases in Turkey, for instance, with Soviet bases in Cuba. But such comparisons are false and unworthy. The whole world, Russia included, knows that America has no aggressive designs on any part of the world, and that such overseas bases are defensive only. Without them, Western Europe and the other surviving frontiers of the Free World would soon be overrun. Khrushchev may counter with a blockade of Berlin, or with a move against Nationalist China, or with some other stroke of power. But the Communist objective of world revolution should be clear, despite the blatant disregard for truth and morality, and reliance instead on falsehood and deceit.
Our hope is that America at long last is coming to her senses through a realization that no nation can do business with Moscow without eventual loss of freedom and all that is thereby implied. America has every legal and moral reason to break diplomatic relations with Russia. That step may be necessary to rally the Free World to a united stand against the Mighty Menacer of the nations and of modern man.
PROTESTANT STATISTICS FOR CUBA1
1. Source: World Christian Handbook 1962, London: World Dominion Press.
2. Includes children and adherents not counted as Communicants or Full Members.
Our prayers should also be raised for the 6,743,000 inhabitants (U.N. estimate for 1960) of Cuba, an area of 44,206 square miles that has become virtually a Soviet outpost in the Western hemisphere. Almost five in six of its people are nominally Roman Catholic. The World Christian Handbook for 1962 contains the following breakdown: Roman Catholics, 5,191,682; Protestants, 240,030; Jews, 8,000. The accompanying chart indicates the strength of the various Protestant communions in Cuba. It is important that our prayers for the fall of the tyrants be coupled with prayers for the sustaining grace of God in the lives of his people.
In a recent letter a Canadian missionary there wrote: “Assure the people at home that our brethren in Cuba are firm in the faith and are winning souls. The work that is here is solid. God is blessing the church in Cuba.” The missionary, Wolfe Hansen, first foreigner permitted to enter Cuba for religious work during the Castro regime, says he received a “heartwarming” welcome. “It is wonderful to see the firmness of the Christians.… Where there are no pastors, the laymen preach. God is blessing the churches everywhere.”
Fear for Cuban churchmen—for both national and American missionaries—was expressed by refugee ministers in Florida in the aftermath of President Kennedy’s move. “Everybody is happy for the action,” explained the Rev. Ornan Iglesias, a Methodist minister from Matanzas, “but they are sad and worried about what could take place.” Another minister, the Rev. Daniel Rodriguez, a Baptist from Havana, voiced fear “that many outspoken pastors and Christian laymen may be in prison already because that’s what happened during the invasion.” There had been no direct word from Cuba since President Kennedy’s announcement of the blockade; flights of refugees had been cancelled, and phone calls had not been put through. But Rodriguez said he did not think the few remaining American missionaries in Cuba—thought to be fewer than ten in number—would be harmed unless the Castro government for some reason thinks they are stirring up anti-Castro sentiment. He surmises that they will be placed under close surveillance and perhaps under some restrictions. The Miami Herald’s religion editor, Adon Taft, reported that several Spanish-language churches in that city have scheduled special prayer meetings, and that Saulo Salvador, a Baptist layman who is president of Protestant Cubans in Exile, urged all other congregations to follow suit.
A great contrast exists between the glum attitude of Christian workers in Cuba today and the jubilance they expressed when Castro first came to power. In April, 1960, CHRISTIANITY TODAY reported a Methodist bishop as saying that “a wave of enthusiasm has flowed through Cuba since Fidel Castro came to power.” The bishop also observed, at that time, that “many people in Cuba see hope for betterment in Castro’s regime.” He had returned from a March evangelistic mission in the island state. Less than a year later, Adon Taft interviewed refugees from the admittedly Marxist bastion. “Severing the Cuban Catholic Church from its ties with Rome and setting up a Cuban ‘Pope,’ with Communist leanings,” reported Taft (Mar. 13, 1961, issue of the Miami Herald), “appears to be the first aim of the present government.” He added that a national Protestant church was also being considered, with the same tainted leadership.
One cannot meditate on the hope for liberty in Cuba without an eye on the larger problem in Latin America, where a feudal society still prevails and great masses are in poverty and ignorance alongside a dominantly Roman Catholic religious complex. Here, as elsewhere, authoritarian religion has engendered reaction that fuels the spirit of revolution. Vast multitudes remain outside the very churches whose hierarchy demands special religious privileges. The United States’ effort to take a firm stand against Soviet manipulation in Cuba was long retarded in part by Latin American leaders who view Castro more as a hero than as a villain. The mounting evidences of Soviet manipulation have tempered this optimism.
In the long run, the causes of justice and freedom, as well as the cause of redemption, are related to the spirit of pure religion. And pure religion will turn its eyes not only toward Washington and Moscow, toward Berlin and Delhi, Peiping and Havana, but toward the New Jerusalem that emerges not from the ruins of human corruption but from the glory of divine redemption.
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As we give thanks to God during the Thanksgiving season for his blessings upon our nation, it is well to recall that if any nation had Christian origins it is the United States. The deep religious faith of the first settlers throws considerable light on the United States as history’s first grand experiment in democratic government. It also throws significant light on our insistence upon freedom and justice for all, stones upon which our nation was built. The religious folk who came to these shores built well: they fashioned the most enduring government functioning in the world today. Other governments of their day have come and gone, or have been so modified in structure as to bear little resemblance to what they were. The Queen of England, for example, cannot be regarded as a successor of George VI of Pilgrim days. But President Kennedy is George Washington’s successor. We ought to be mindful of our national Christian origins and of our enduring democratic structure of government, and for these give thanks.
It is also well to remember that our national day of thanksgiving was instituted, not by some act of ecclesiastical assembly or synod, but by an act of Congress. Accordingly, not the Church, but the President of the United States summons the people of America to give thanks to Almighty God for his benevolence. Thanksgiving Day is not an ecclesiastical but a national holiday. Unless we remember this we shall omit thanks for a blessing unique to the American people. Surely Christians, at least, must regard it as a singular blessing to live in a nation whose head of state officially acknowledges God as the source of national blessings, and who publicly summons the people to their places of worship to render thanks to him to whom thanks is due.
Recollection of the national origin of Thanksgiving Day may also insert wholesome balance into the thought of Christians who find it easy and natural to thank God for spiritual blessings comprehended in Jesus Christ, but find it less natural to thank God for products of industry and commerce, for farm and field, for household gadgets and automobiles, for turkey, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. Some Christians tend to be so “spiritual” as to think such things as these too material and too earthy to be associated with God as an occasion for worship and thanksgiving. Yet the specific intent of Thanksgiving Day, and of the summons that comes from the White House, is to gather in our homes and places of worship to give thanks, not for the forgiveness of sins and the life everlasting in Jesus Christ, but for bread and butter, clothing and homes, green meadows and gold shocks of corn, for the aroma and the taste of good things that laden our Thanksgiving Day tables. These too are indeed gifts of God, for God is precisely the kind of God who takes pleasure in these things and gives them to fill man’s heart with joy. As Paul stated, God “left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17). Some Christian groups have hymnbooks so “spiritual” that nature and its beauties and joys hardly find a place in their songs of praise. The God of the Bible is indeed high and lifted up, and awful in his holiness, yet he is also the God who created Leviathan “to play” in the waters of the seas. To be spiritual, Christians must be able to take honest and easy pleasure from the spiced pie, the golden browned turkey, the rich gravy, the smell of fresh-baked rolls. They must be able to acknowledge and accept the fact that their God takes pleasure in having man take pleasure in things such as these. Unless one can accept them with ease from God’s hand and enjoy them without a nagging, undefined sense of guilt, one will be unable joyously and comfortably to give thanks to God for these gifts of his hands. Christians sometimes develop a kind of piety which makes it almost impossible to believe that God has given man food and drink to make glad his heart.
At Thanksgiving time Christians ought to recall one other thing. These material, earthy things of life are valid tokens and authentic guarantees that the mercy of God “endureth forever.” According to Psalm 136 the light of the sun which illumines the day, the moon and stars whose shining rules over the darkness of the night, and the food which God gives to all flesh, are demonstrations and tokens which declare—if we will but hear—that “his mercy endureth forever.”
A thankful people is a happy people. We have but to recall the moment when someone did or gave something wonderful to us; we were exceedingly grateful—and fully as happy! Men are only as happy as they are thankful. If Christians could see the turkey on their Thanksgiving Day table, and all Americans the natural gifts of God, as tokens of God’s everlasting mercy, they would be more spiritual, and more happy because more grateful.
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Vatican’S Press Corps Too Can Profit From Pope’S Plea
To look for the sensational, to distort truth, and to highlight incidentals—these were some of the temptations against which they had to fight, the Pope told over 800 journalists two days after the opening of Vatican Council II. The occasion was remarkable for at least two reasons. First, the venue was the Sistine Chapel, where popes are elected, and which for two centuries had been reserved for top priority events. Less striking but equally significant was the emergent fact that about 90 per cent of the reporters present knowledgeably chanted the Latin responses which preceded and followed the papal benediction. Earlier the Pope, speaking fluent French, had pointed to Michelangelo’s famous fresco of the Last Judgment, and suggested that here was a setting in which each one could “reflect with profit on his responsibilities,” adding: “Yours, gentlemen, are great.” If the important mission of his listeners was conscientiously fulfilled, he would look forward to “very happy results as regards the attitude of world opinion towards the Catholic Church in general, her institutions, and her teachings.” It was a good address which hit all the right notes, and the surprisingly little old man whose great dream has come true left the chapel amid thunderous applause.
A short walk across St. Peter’s Square took the newsmen back to the Via Della Conciliazione—and a Press Office which might have profited from John XXIII’s words. Here for the three days prior to the council’s opening was the ultimate in disorganization. Even now it is incredibly difficult to find an official whose English runs to more than “go away, I’m too busy.” It may be true, but it is not helpful. Given a working knowledge of Italian, a direct line to two or three of the more influential cardinals, and a flexible approach to the facts, little things like that wouldn’t matter.
In such a context it is not unexpected that some speculative reports were built around the election of 16 members for each of the ten commissions (the president and eight other members of each are papal appointees). The Fathers were given a list of the members of the preparatory commissions which had dealt with the preliminary work for the council. Italian and Curial names predominated. Many Fathers regarded this list as a Vatican recommendation for reconfirmation of such members. There arose a movement toward “internationalization.” On the motion of a French and a German cardinal, elections were postponed for three days to give the Fathers time to get to know each other and, as one commentator put it, to indulge in “highminded lobbying.” The Curia raised no objections: they may still be sensitive to any reference to the steamroller tactics of Pius IX and Cardinal Manning at the First Vatican Council. It was nothing more than a minor triumph for democratic procedure, but some newshawks smelled politics where there was none. Composition of the commissions is nonetheless important, for the 2,540-member council itself is so unwieldy that the real hammering out of proposals must devolve on small working groups.
Election results for the first seven commissions disclosed that Italians, the biggest national group, got only 15 of the 112 places. Americans came next with 12 posts, which went to: Archbishop Hallinan of Atlanta (Liturgy); Archbishop Dearden of Detroit, Bishop Wright of Pittsburgh, and Bishop Griffiths of New York (Doctrine); Bishop McEntegart of Brooklyn (Oriental Churches); Bishop Sheen of New York (Missions); Archbishop Cousins of Milwaukee and Archbishop O’Conner, president of the Vatican’s Secretariat for Mass Media (Laity); Cardinal McIntyre, Archbishop of Los Angeles, and Archbishop Alter of Cincinnati (Bishops); Cardinal Ritter, Archbishop of St. Louis, and Archbishop Shehan of Baltimore (Discipline). The comparatively small Italian representation may have far-reaching consequences on the Vatican, 25 of whose 32 resident cardinals, and 90 per cent of whose other officials, are Italian.
During the opening days of the Vatican Council, police warned three ministers of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland for distributing copies of John’s Gospel in St. Peter’s Square. Taken later to the police station and accused of “working against the Vatican,” they refused to sign a document saying they would stop distribution. Thereafter an unwanted police escort slept in their hotel. Their case was warmly espoused by a vociferous American evangelical who, thereafter accounted suspicious by association, would have had his own hotel room searched but for the intervention of another American who happened to be on the spot. The official attitude miraculously changed, however, when the first American “let it slip” that he broadcast over 300 radio stations back home. When last heard of, the Irishmen, having given their escort the slip, were causing consternation by standing a few feet outside Vatican territory and reading alour Revelation 17.
While Vatican participants began the high task of discussion and study, the world press, radio, and television proved an unparalleled propaganda boon.
